Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Barbara (née Siggers) and Clarence LaVaughn "C. L." Franklin. Her father was an itinerant preacher originally from Shelby, Mississippi, while her mother was an accomplished piano player and vocalist.[6] Alongside Franklin, her parents had three other children while both C. L. and Barbara had children from outside their marriage. The family relocated to Buffalo, New York when Franklin was two. Before her fifth birthday, C. L. Franklin permanently relocated the family to Detroit, Michigan where he took over the pastorship of New Bethel Baptist Church. Franklin's parents had a troubled marriage due to stories of C. L. Franklin's philandering and in 1948, they separated, with Barbara relocating back to Buffalo with her son, Vaughn, from a previous relationship.

Contrary to popular notion, Franklin's mother did not abandon her children; not only would Franklin recall seeing her mother in Buffalo during the summer, Barbara also frequently visited her children in Detroit.[7] Franklin's mother died on March 7, 1952, before Franklin's tenth birthday. Several women, including Franklin's grandmother Rachel, and Mahalia Jackson took turns helping with the children at the Franklin home.[8] During this time, Franklin learned how to play piano by ear.[9] Franklin's father's emotionally driven sermons resulted in him being known as the man with the "million-dollar voice" and earning thousands of dollars for sermons in various churches across the country.[10][11] Franklin's celebrity led to his home being visited by various celebrities including gospel musicians Clara Ward, James Cleveland and early Caravans members Albertina Walker and Inez Andrews as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke.[12][13]

Just after her mother's death, Franklin began singing solos at New Bethel, debuting with the hymn, "Jesus, Be a Fence Around Me".[8][14] Four years later, when Franklin was 14, her father began managing her, bringing her on the road with him during his so-called "gospel caravan" tours for her to perform in various churches.[15] He helped his daughter get signed to her first recording deal with J.V.B. Records, where her first album, Songs of Faith, was issued in 1956. Two singles were released to gospel radio stations including "Never Grow Old" and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand". Franklin sometimes traveled with The Caravans and The Soul Stirrers during this time and developed a crush on Sam Cooke, who was then singing with the Soul Stirrers before his secular career.

After turning 18, Franklin confided to her father that she aspired to follow Sam Cooke to record pop music. Serving as her manager, C. L. agreed to the move and helped to produce a two-song demo that soon was brought to the attention of Columbia Records, who agreed to sign her in 1960. Franklin was signed as a "five-percent artist".[16] During this period, Franklin would be coached by choreographer Cholly Atkins to prepare for her pop performances. Before signing with Columbia, Sam Cooke tried to persuade Franklin's father to have his label, RCA sign Franklin. He had also been courted by local record label owner Berry Gordy to sign Franklin and her elder sister Erma to his Tamla label. Franklin's father felt the label was not established enough yet. Franklin's first Columbia single, "Today I Sing the Blues",[17] was issued in September 1960 and later reached the top ten of the Hot Rhythm & Blues Sellers chart.

By 1964, Franklin began recording more pop music, reaching the top ten on the R&B chart with the ballad, "Runnin' Out of Fools" in early 1965. She had two R&B charted singles in 1965 and 1966 with the songs "One Step Ahead" and "Cry Like a Baby" while also reaching the Easy Listening charts with the ballads "You Made Me Love You" and "(No, No) I'm Losing You". By the mid-1960s, Franklin was netting $100,000 from countless performances in nightclubs and theaters.[18] Also during that period, Franklin appeared on rock and roll shows such as Hollywood A Go-Go and Shindig!. However, it was argued that Franklin's potential was neglected at the label. Columbia executive John H. Hammond later said he felt Columbia did not understand Franklin's early gospel background and failed to bring that aspect out further during her Columbia period.[17]

In 1985, inspired by her desire to have a "younger sound" in her music, her fifth Arista album, Who's Zoomin' Who?, became her first album to be certified platinum, after selling well over a million copies, thanks to the hits, "Freeway of Love", the title track and "Another Night".[27] The following year's Aretha album nearly matched this success with the hit singles "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Jimmy Lee" and "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me", her international number-one duet with George Michael. During that period, Franklin provided vocals to the theme songs of the shows, A Different World and Together.[28] In 1987, she issued her third gospel album, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, which was recorded at her late father's New Bethel church, followed by Through the Storm in 1989. Franklin's 1991 album, What You See is What You Sweat, flopped on the charts. Franklin returned to the charts in 1993 with the dance song "A Deeper Love" and returned to the top 40 with the song "Willing to Forgive" in 1994.

In October 2014 Franklin became the first woman to have 100 songs on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart with the success of her cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep", which debuted at number 47 on the chart.[32]

In December 2015 Franklin gave an acclaimed performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors during the section for honoree Carole King, who co-wrote the song.[33][34][35][36] During the bridge of the song, Ms. Franklin dropped her fur coat to the stage, for which the audience rewarded her with a mid-performance standing ovation.[37]

According to Richie Unterberger, Franklin is "one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged."[38] She has often been described as a great singer and musician due to "vocal flexibility, interpretive intelligence, skillful piano-playing, her ear, her experience."[39] Franklin's voice has been described as being a "powerful mezzo-soprano voice" and has been praised for her arrangements and interpretations of other artists' hit songs.[40] Of describing Franklin's voice as a youngster on her first album, Songs of Faith, released when she was just fourteen, Jerry Wexler explained that Franklin's voice "was not that of a child but rather of an ecstatic hierophant."[41] Franklin's image went through rapid changes throughout her career. During the 1960s, Franklin was known for wearing bouffant hairdos and extravagant dresses that were sometimes embellished with either mink fur or feathers. In the 1970s, embracing her roots, Franklin briefly wore an Afro and the Afrocentric styled clothing admired by her peers. In the mid-1970s, after dropping weight, Franklin began wearing more fitted attire. By the 1980s, she had settled on wearing evening gowns and extravagant dresses.

Aretha Franklin and William Wilkerson watching Roger Federer at the 2011 US Open.

After being raised in Detroit, Franklin relocated to New York City in the 1960s, where she lived until moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. She eventually settled in Encino, Los Angeles where she lived until 1982. She then returned to the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to be close to her ailing father and siblings. Franklin maintains a residence there to this day. Following an incident in 1984, she has cited a fear of flying that has prevented her from traveling overseas; she has performed only in North America since then.[42]

Franklin is the mother of four sons. She became pregnant at the age of just 12[43] and gave birth to her first child, named Clarence after her father, on January 28, 1955. The father of the child is Donald Burk, a boy she knew from school. At the age of 14 on January 22, 1957, Franklin had a second child named Edward after his father Edward Jordan. Both of her children took her family name.[44] While Franklin was pursuing her career and "hanging out with [friends]", Franklin's grandmother Rachel and sister Erma took turns raising the children.[45] Franklin's third child, Ted White, Jr., was born in 1964 and is known professionally as Teddy Richards. He has provided guitar backing for his mother's band during live concerts.[46] Her youngest son, Kecalf Cunningham born March 28, 1970 is the child of her road manager Ken Cunningham.

Franklin has married twice. She married Ted White in 1961, despite objections from her father. After a contentious marriage that involved domestic violence, she divorced White in 1969.[47] She then married her second husband, actor Glynn Turman, on April 11, 1978 at her father's church. By marrying Turman, Franklin became stepmother of Turman's three children from a previous marriage. Franklin and Turman separated in 1982 after Franklin returned to Michigan from California, and they divorced in 1984. At one point, Franklin had plans to walk down the aisle with longtime companion Willie Wilkerson.[48][49] Franklin and Wilkerson had had two previous engagements stretching back to 1988. Franklin eventually called the 2012 engagement off.

Franklin's sisters Erma and Carolyn were professional musicians as well and spent years performing background vocals on Franklin's recordings. Following Franklin's divorce from Ted White, her brother Cecil became her manager, and maintained that position until his death from lung cancer on December 26, 1989. Sister Carolyn died the previous year in April 1988 from breast cancer, while eldest sister Erma passed from throat cancer in September 2002. Franklin's half-brother Vaughn died two months after Erma in late 2002. Half-sister Carl Kelley (née Jennings; born 1940) is still alive at 77. Kelley is C. L. Franklin's daughter by Mildred Jennings, a then 12-year-old congregant of New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis, where C. L. was pastor.[50] Franklin was performing at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, on June 10, 1979, when her father C. L. was shot twice at point blank range in his Detroit home.[51] After six months at Henry Ford Hospital, still in a state of coma, C.L. was moved back to his home with 24-hour nursing care. Aretha moved back to Detroit in late 1982 to assist with the care of her father, who died at Detroit's New Light Nursing Home on July 27, 1984.[52]

Some of her music business friends have included Dionne Warwick, Mavis Staples, and Cissy Houston, who began singing with Franklin as members of the Sweet Inspirations. Cissy sang background on Franklin's classic hit "Ain't No Way".[53] Franklin first met Cissy's daughter, Whitney, in the early 1970s.[54] She was made Whitney's honorary aunt, and Whitney often referred to her as "Auntie Ree".[55] Whitney died on February 11, 2012.[56] Franklin stated she was surprised by her death.[56] She had initially planned to perform at Houston's memorial service on February 18, but her representative claimed that Franklin suffered a leg spasm and was unable to attend. In response to criticism of her non-attendance, she stated, "God knows I wanted to be there, but I couldn't."[57]

Franklin dealt with weight issues for years. In 1974, she dropped 40 pounds (18 kg) during a crash diet[60] and maintained her new weight until the end of the decade.[61] Franklin again lost the weight in the early 1990s before gaining some back.[62] A former chain smoker who struggled with alcoholism, she quit smoking in 1992.[63] Franklin admitted in 1994 that her smoking was "messing with my voice",[64] but after quitting smoking she said later, in 2003, that her weight "ballooned".[65]

In 2010, Franklin canceled a number of concerts after she decided to have surgery for an undisclosed tumor.[62] Discussing the surgery in 2011, she quoted her doctor as saying it would "add 15 to 20 years" to her life. She denied that the ailment had anything to do with pancreatic cancer, as it was rumored.[66] On May 19, 2011, Franklin had her comeback show in the Chicago theatre.[67] In May 2013, Franklin canceled two performances to deal with an undisclosed medical treatment.[68] Later in the same month, Franklin canceled three more concerts in June and planned to return to perform in July.[69] However, a show of July 27 in Clarkston, Michigan was canceled due to continued medical treatment.[70] In addition, Franklin canceled an appearance at an MLB luncheon in Chicago honoring her commitment to civil rights on an August 24 date.[71] She also canceled a performance of September 21 in Atlanta due to her health recovery.[72] During a phone interview with The Associated Press in late August 2013 Franklin stated that she had a "miraculous" recovery from her undisclosed illness but had to cancel shows and appearances until she was at 100% health, stating she was "85% healed".[73] Franklin has since returned to live performing, including a 2013 Christmas concert at Detroit's Motor City Casino. She launched a multi-city tour beginning the summer of 2014, starting with a performance of June 14 in New York at the Radio City Music Hall.[74]

In 2017, Franklin canceled a series of concerts due to health reasons. During an outdoors Detroit show, Franklin told the audience to "keep me in your prayers".[75] In July 2017, Franklin reemerged, appearing to lose more weight before a performance at the Wolf Trap in Virginia.[76]

"American history wells up when Aretha sings", president Obama explained his emotional response to her performance of "A Natural Woman" at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors. "Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll--the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope".[85]

On June 8, 2017, the City of Detroit honored Franklin's legacy by renaming a portion of Madison Street, between Brush and Witherell Streets, "Aretha Franklin Way".[86]

On 29 January 2018, the Oakland Press's correspondent Gary Graff finally confirmed that the American Idol runner-up Jennifer Hudson will take the role to play Franklin in her coming biopic. The news was announced by the Queen of Soul's executive producer Clive Davis, who made public their decision on the choice of actors casting in the film two days before Graff's article went published.[87]

^On an ABC promo aired on July 27, 2010, announcing Franklin and Condoleezza Rice's appearing together in concert there was a segment in which Franklin was being interviewed and she said herself, "I am a Democrat".

1.
White House
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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U. S. president since John Adams in 1800, the term White House is often used to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in The White House announced that. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style, construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior, reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semi-circular South portico in 1824, because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, in the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as an area for social events. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space, by 1948, the houses load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the rooms were completely dismantled. Once this work was completed, the rooms were rebuilt. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, the property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Presidents Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of Americas Favorite Architecture, in May 1790, New York began construction of Government House for his official residence, but he never occupied it. The national capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790, the July 1790 Residence Act named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the temporary national capital for a 10-year period while the Federal City was under construction. The City of Philadelphia rented Robert Morriss city house at 190 High Street for Washingtons presidential residence, the first president occupied the Market Street mansion from November 1790 to March 1797, and altered it in ways that may have influenced the design of the White House. As part of an effort to have Philadelphia named the permanent national capital, Pennsylvania built a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away. President John Adams also occupied the Market Street mansion from March 1797 to May 1800, on Saturday, November 1,1800, he became the first president to occupy the White House. The Presidents House in Philadelphia became a hotel and was demolished in 1832, the Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre Charles LEnfants plan for the newly established federal city, Washington, D. C

2.
Memphis, Tennessee
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Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf, Memphis had a population of 653,450 in 2013, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee. It is the largest city on the Mississippi River, the third largest in the greater Southeastern United States, the greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, had a 2014 population of 1,317,314. This makes Memphis the second-largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed by metropolitan Nashville, Memphis is the youngest of Tennessees major cities, founded in 1819 as a planned city by a group of wealthy Americans including judge John Overton and future president Andrew Jackson. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian, and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as Memphis and the Mid-South. Occupying a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis has been a location for human settlement by varying cultures over thousands of years. The historic Chickasaw Indian tribe, believed to be their descendants, French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto would encounter the Chickasaw in that area, in the 16th century. J. D. L. Chickasaw Bluffs, located on the Mississippi River at the present day location of Memphis, spain and the United States vied for control of this site, which was a favorite of the Chickasaws. The United States gained the right to navigate the Mississippi River, the Spanish dismantled the fort, shipping its lumber and iron to their locations in Arkansas. Captain Isaac Guion led an American force down the Ohio River to claim the land, by this time, the Spanish had departed. The forts ruins went unnoticed twenty years later when Memphis was laid out as a city, the city of Memphis was founded on May 22,1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. They named it after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River, Memphis developed as a trade and transportation center in the 19th century because of its flood-free location high above the Mississippi River. Located in the delta region along the river, its outlying areas were developed as cotton plantations. The cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the labor of large numbers of African-American slaves. Through the early 19th century, one million slaves were transported from the Upper South, Many were transported by steamboats along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This gave planters and cotton brokers access to the Atlantic Coast for shipping cotton to England, the citys demographics changed dramatically in the 1850s and 1860s under waves of immigration and domestic migration. Due to increased immigration since the 1840s and the Great Famine, ethnic Irish made up 9.9 percent of the population in 1850, but 23.2 percent in 1860, when the total population was 22,623. They had encountered considerable discrimination in the city but by 1860 and they also gained many elected and patronage positions in the Democratic Party city government, and an Irish man was elected as mayor before the Civil War

3.
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
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Bloomfield Hills is a city located in Metro Detroits northern suburbs in Oakland County in the U. S. state of Michigan,20.2 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. The city is almost completely surrounded by Bloomfield Township, as of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,869. What is now Bloomfield Hills was an area until the turn of the 20th century when wealthy Detroit residents bought up the land. The settlement became a village in 1927, and in 1932 residents voted to become a city to avoid being incorporated into growing Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills is the location of the National Historic Landmark Cranbrook Educational Community and other historic sites listed on the national register of historic places. In popular culture, Bloomfield Hills was the setting for the 2005 film The Upside of Anger. In the 2002 film 8 Mile, Eminem mentions Cranbrook Kingswood while making fun of Doc because he attended Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills is the hometown of the comic book character, Trance. Some scenes in Out of Sight with Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney were filmed at a residence in Bloomfield Hills. Jimmy Hoffa was last seen at the former Machus Red Fox restaurant in adjacent Bloomfield Township, the novel Gilda Joyce, The Ladies of the Lake is set in a private school in Bloomfield. The Congregational Church of Birmingham United Church of Christ was founded in Birmingham, St. Hugo of the Hills Roman Catholic Church was funded by Theodore F. MacManus and his wife in memory of their deceased children, Hugo and Hubert. St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic Church was built from 1931–1936, with approval from Bishop Michael J. Gallagher, other churches include St. Acme Group, consisting of Acme Mills, Great Lakes Filters, and Fairway Products, is headquartered in Bloomfield Hills. Other companies headquartered in Bloomfield Hills, MI include Taubman Centers, larson Realty Group, Princeton Enterprises, PulteGroup, Inc. TIP Capital, Bloomfield Hills Bancorp, Reverie, BlackEagle Partners, alidade Capital, and O2 Investment Partners.04 square miles, of which 4.96 square miles is land and 0.08 square miles is water. As of the 2005–2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, there were 3,774 people,1,570 households, the population density was 796.4 per square mile. There were 1,628 housing units at a density of 329.1 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 89. 1% White,5. 4% Asian,4. 3% Black,0. 8% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. 2% of the population. As of the census of 2010, there were 3,869 people,1,489 households, the population density was 780.0 inhabitants per square mile. There were 1,659 housing units at a density of 334.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 87. 3% White,4. 1% African American,0. 1% Native American,6. 7% Asian,0. 3% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. 5% of the population

4.
Detroit
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Detroit is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Michigan, the fourth-largest city in the Midwest and the largest city on the United States–Canada border. It is the seat of Wayne County, the most populous county in the state, the municipality of Detroit had a 2015 estimated population of 677,116, making it the 21st-most populous city in the United States. Roughly one-half of Michigans population lives in Metro Detroit alone, the Detroit–Windsor area, a commercial link straddling the Canada–U. S. Border, has a population of about 5.7 million. Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, a strait that connects the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hubs in the United States, the City of Detroit anchors the second-largest economic region in the Midwest, behind Chicago, and the thirteenth-largest in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor are connected through a tunnel and various bridges, Detroit was founded on July 24,1701 by the French explorer and adventurer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and a party of settlers. During the 19th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region, with expansion of the American automobile industry in the early 20th century, the Detroit area emerged as a significant metropolitan region within the United States. The city became the fourth-largest in the country for a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, suburban expansion continued with construction of a regional freeway system. A great portion of Detroits public transport was abandoned in favour of becoming a city in the post-war period. Due to industrial restructuring and loss of jobs in the auto industry, between 2000 and 2010 the citys population fell by 25 percent, changing its ranking from the nations 10th-largest city to 18th. In 2010, the city had a population of 713,777 and this resulted from suburbanization, corruption, industrial restructuring and the decline of Detroits auto industry. In 2013, the state of Michigan declared an emergency for the city. Detroit has experienced urban decay as its population and jobs have shifted to its suburbs or elsewhere, conservation efforts managed to save many architectural pieces since the 2000s and allowed several large-scale revitalisations. More recently, the population of Downtown Detroit, Midtown Detroit, paleo-Indian people inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago. In the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi, for the next hundred years, virtually no British, colonist, or French action was contemplated without consultation with, or consideration of the Iroquois likely response. When the French and Indian War evicted the Kingdom of France from Canada, the 1798 raids and resultant 1799 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to westward emigration, which began almost immediately, and by 1800 white settlers were pouring westwards. By 1773, the population of Detroit was 1,400, by 1778, its population was up to 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in the Province of Quebec

5.
Michigan
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Michigan /ˈmɪʃᵻɡən/ is a state in the Great Lakes and Midwestern regions of the United States. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, Michigan is the tenth most populous of the 50 United States, with the 11th most extensive total area. Its capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit, Michigan is the only state to consist of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is noted to be shaped like a mitten. The Upper Peninsula is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, the two peninsulas are connected by the Mackinac Bridge. The state has the longest freshwater coastline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, as a result, it is one of the leading U. S. states for recreational boating. Michigan also has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds, a person in the state is never more than six miles from a natural water source or more than 85 miles from a Great Lakes shoreline. What is now the state of Michigan was first settled by Native American tribes before being colonized by French explorers in the 17th century, the area was organized as part of the larger Northwest Territory until 1800, when western Michigan became part of the Indiana Territory. Eventually, in 1805, the Michigan Territory was formed, which lasted until it was admitted into the Union on January 26,1837, the state of Michigan soon became an important center of industry and trade in the Great Lakes region and a popular immigrant destination. Though Michigan has come to develop an economy, it is widely known as the center of the U. S. automotive industry. When the first European explorers arrived, the most populous tribes were Algonquian peoples, which include the Anishinaabe groups of Ojibwe, Odaawaa/Odawa, the three nations co-existed peacefully as part of a loose confederation called the Council of Three Fires. The Ojibwe, whose numbers are estimated to have been between 25,000 and 35,000, were the largest, French voyageurs and coureurs des bois explored and settled in Michigan in the 17th century. The first Europeans to reach what became Michigan were those of Étienne Brûlés expedition in 1622, the first permanent European settlement was founded in 1668 on the site where Père Jacques Marquette established Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan as a base for Catholic missions, missionaries in 1671–75 founded outlying stations at Saint Ignace and Marquette. Jesuit missionaries were received by the areas Indian populations, with relatively few difficulties or hostilities. In 1679, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle built Fort Miami at present-day St. Joseph, in 1691, the French established a trading post and Fort St. Joseph along the St. Joseph River at the present day city of Niles. The hundred soldiers and workers who accompanied Cadillac built a fort enclosing one arpent, cadillacs wife, Marie Thérèse Guyon, soon moved to Detroit, becoming one of the first European women to settle in the Michigan wilderness. The town quickly became a major fur-trading and shipping post, the Église de Saint-Anne was founded the same year

6.
Glynn Turman
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Glynn Russell Turman is an American stage, television, and film actor as well as a writer, director, and producer. He recently portrayed Jeremiah Kaan on the Showtime series House of Lies, lonne Elder III, John Fiedler and Diana Sands. While he did not play the role when it transferred to film in 1961 and he made his Los Angeles stage debut in Vinnette Carrolls Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. An impressive 1974 performance in The Wine Sellers earned him a Los Angeles Critics Award nomination, the play was also produced on Broadway as What The Wine Sellers Buy. He won his first NAACP Image Award for his work in the play Eyes of the American, a stage director as well, he received his second NAACP Image award for his directing of Deadwood Dick at the Inner City Cultural Center. He segued these directing talents to TV where he helmed episodes of The Parent Hood, Hangin with Mr. Cooper. He also directed during his seasons of employment on A Different World. The shows theme song was sung by his ex-wife, legendary Queen of Soul artist Aretha Franklin, D. s Revenge and A Hero Aint Nothin but a Sandwich. TV movies included Carters Army, the prestigious Centennial, Attica, the quality of Glynns work has shown over the decades with his participation in such prominent TV-movies as Race to Freedom, The Underground Railroad in 1994, Buffalo Soldiers and Freedom Song. More notable films include Penitentiary II, Gremlins, Deep Cover, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Men of Honor, Sahara, Kings of the Evening, Burlesque and Super 8. In 2004, he joined the hit HBO series The Wire portraying the role of Mayor Clarence Royce. His portrayal of Mayor Royce has given him an NAACP Image award nomination for Outstanding Support Actor in a Drama Series for the 2007 awards ceremony, since The Wire, Turman guest-starred as a patient in the Scrubs episode My Last Words. Turmans other television appearances include the Twilight Zone segment Paladin of the Lost Hour, Matlock, Millennium, in 2008, he won a Primetime Emmy award for his guest appearance on the HBO series In Treatment. He recently appeared on the ABC series Detroit 1-8-7 and he is currently performing and producing a one-man show, Movin Man, about his life and plans a book as well. Turman was almost cast for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, in a 2007 interview, Turman recalled, That was in George Lucas book. At the time, I had no idea, I just went to the audition, did it and got out of there. In 2012, he began starring in House of Lies on Showtime as the father of the characters played by Don Cheadle, im 2016 he appeared in the Oprah Winfrey Network tv show Queen Sugar in which he played the father, Ernest Bordelon. The character died in one, season three

7.
C. L. Franklin
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Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, better known as Bishop C. L. Franklin or The Reverend C. L. Franklin, was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist. Known as the man with the Million-Dollar Voice, Franklin served as the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, Franklin was also the father of American singer–songwriter Aretha Franklin. He was born Clarence LaVaughn Walker in Sunflower County, Mississippi, to sharecroppers Willie Walker, C. L. Franklin would recall that the only thing his father did for him was to teach him to salute when he returned from service in World War I in 1919. Willie Walker abandoned the family shortly thereafter, and the next year Rachel married Henry Franklin, whose surname the family adopted. At age 16, he became a preacher, initially working the Black itinerant preaching circuit, before settling at New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where he remained until May 1944. From there he moved to the pulpit of the Friendship Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York, throughout the late 1940s and 1950s his fame grew. He preached throughout the country while maintaining his pulpit at New Bethel, known as the man with the Million Dollar Voice, Franklin was one of the first ministers to place his sermons on records, and to broadcast sermons via radio on Sundays. He commanded high fees for his public appearances, among his most famous sermons were The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest and Dry Bones in the Valley. In 2011, The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, in addition to his fame as a preacher, Franklin was known for his fine singing voice. He greatly encouraged his daughter Aretha Franklin in her musical endeavors and he also formed an acapella group with Anthony Alexander Chamblee, his first cousin. They only made one album before he accepted the call to preach, shortly after midnight on Sunday, June 10,1979, Franklin was shot twice at point-blank range during what was said to be an attempted robbery at his home on Detroits West Side. He was taken to Henry Ford Hospital on nearby West Grand Boulevard and he remained in a coma for the next five years. The Franklin children moved him back to the six months after the tragedy. He remained at the home until the middle of 1984 and he died on July 27,1984, just one week after being placed in Detroits New Light Nursing Home. Franklin was entombed at Detroits historic Woodlawn Cemetery on North Woodward Avenue, franklins friend, the Rev. Jasper Williams Jr. of the Salem Bible Church of Atlanta, Georgia, gave his eulogy. LeRoy Bailey Jr. senior pastor of The First Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut, house musician Green Velvet released a track entitled Preacher Man in 1993, consisting primarily of a C. L. Franklin sermon. On October 16,1934, Franklin married his first wife, Alene Gaines, and though that marriage had ended by early 1936, on June 3,1936, Franklin married Barbara Siggers, with whom he had four children, Erma, Cecil, Aretha, and Carolyn. Barbara had a son by a relationship, Vaughn, whom C. L. adopted shortly after the marriage

8.
Erma Franklin
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Erma Vernice Franklin was an American gospel and R&B singer. Franklin was the sister of American singer/musician Aretha Franklin. Franklins best known recording was the version of Piece of My Heart, written and produced by Bert Berns. The better-known cover version of the song was recorded the following year by Big Brother. Erma Franklin was born in Shelby, Mississippi, the oldest daughter of Barbara and she was raised in Detroit, Michigan, where her father was pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church. She was raised by both parents until the age of ten when her parents separated for the final time and her mother took her eldest sibling, half-brother Vaughn, with her to Buffalo, New York, in 1948. Barbara Siggers-Franklin died four years later on March 7,1952, in Buffalo, Erma married Thomas Garrett and gave birth to two children in the early 1960s - Thomas Jr. and Sabrina. She later worked for the Boysville Holy Cross Community Center, a Detroit organization that helps homeless, during her childhood Erma and her sisters Aretha and Carolyn sang at New Bethel Baptist Church. Later, when sister Aretha became a recording artist, Erma provided backing vocals, among her most notable back-up performances for her sister was on Arethas signature tune, Respect. Franklins version of Piece of My Heart was a top ten R&B hit in the U. S. in the UK, the single was re-released in 1992, due to a successful Levis jeans commercial, when it peaked inside the UK Singles Chart at number nine. Franklin told an interviewer that when she first heard Janis Joplins version on the radio, ermas solo recording career was hampered by misfortune and by contracts with record labels who did not find the most suitable material for her husky voice. In the mid-1970s Erma left the industry, apart from occasional engagements with Aretha. Erma Franklin died in September 2002 at the age of 64 and she is interred at Detroits historic Woodlawn Cemetery

9.
Rhythm and blues
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated as R&B or RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy. Lyrics focus heavily on the themes of triumphs and failures in terms of relationships, freedom, economics, aspirations, the term rhythm and blues has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s it was applied to blues records. This tangent of RnB is now known as British rhythm and blues, by the 1970s, the term rhythm and blues changed again and was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a style of R&B developed, becoming known as Contemporary R&B. It combines elements of rhythm and blues, soul, funk, pop, hip hop, popular R&B vocalists at the end of the 20th century included Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. Although Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine is credited with coining the term rhythm and blues as a term in the United States in 1948. It replaced the term race music, which came from within the black community. The term rhythm and blues was used by Billboard in its chart listings from June 1949 until August 1969, before the Rhythm and Blues name was instated, various record companies had already begun replacing the term race music with sepia series. In 2010 LaMont Robinson founded the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Museum, writer and producer Robert Palmer defined rhythm & blues as a catchall term referring to any music that was made by and for black Americans. He has used the term R&B as a synonym for jump blues, however, AllMusic separates it from jump blues because of its stronger, gospel-esque backbeat. Lawrence Cohn, author of Nothing but the Blues, writes that rhythm, according to him, the term embraced all black music except classical music and religious music, unless a gospel song sold enough to break into the charts. Well into the 21st century, the term R&B continues in use to music made by black musicians. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, arrangements were rehearsed to the point of effortlessness and were sometimes accompanied by background vocalists. Simple repetitive parts mesh, creating momentum and rhythmic interplay producing mellow, lilting, while singers are emotionally engaged with the lyrics, often intensely so, they remain cool, relaxed, and in control. The bands dressed in suits, and even uniforms, an associated with the modern popular music that rhythm. Lyrics often seemed fatalistic, and the music typically followed predictable patterns of chords, there was also increasing emphasis on the electric guitar as a lead instrument, as well as the piano and saxophone

10.
Soul music
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Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, Soul music became popular for dancing and listening in the United States, where record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music, catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead vocalist and the chorus and a tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds, Soul music reflected the African-American identity and it stressed the importance of an African-American culture. The new-found African-American consciousness led to new styles of music, which boasted pride in being black, Soul music dominated the U. S. R&B chart in the 1960s, and many recordings crossed over into the pop charts in the U. S. By 1968, the music genre had begun to splinter. Some soul artists developed funk music, while other singers and groups developed slicker, more sophisticated, by the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres, leading to psychedelic soul. The United States saw the development of neo soul around 1994, there are also several other subgenres and offshoots of soul music. The term soul had been used among African-American musicians to emphasize the feeling of being an African-American in the United States, according to another source, Soul music was the result of the urbanization and commercialization of rhythm and blues in the 60s. The phrase soul music itself, referring to music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961. The term soul in African-American parlance has connotations of African-American pride, gospel groups in the 1940s and 1950s occasionally used the term as part of their name. The jazz style that derived from gospel came to be called soul jazz, important innovators whose recordings in the 1950s contributed to the emergence of soul music included Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, and Etta James. Ray Charles is often cited as popularizing the genre with his string of hits starting with 1954s I Got a Woman. Singer Bobby Womack said, Ray was the genius and he turned the world onto soul music. Charles was open in acknowledging the influence of Pilgrim Travelers vocalist Jesse Whitaker on his singing style, little Richard and James Brown were equally influential. Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson are also acknowledged as soul forefathers. Cooke became popular as the singer of gospel group The Soul Stirrers

11.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions

12.
Gospel music
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Gospel music is a music genre in Christian music. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music varies according to culture. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, Gospel music usually has dominant vocals with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were repeated in a call and response fashion, most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella, the first published use of the term Gospel Song probably appeared in 1874. The original gospel songs were written and composed by such as George F. Root, Philip Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel, William Howard Doane. The advent of radio in the 1920s greatly increased the audience for gospel music, following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, and gospel music concerts became quite elaborate. Gospel blues is a form of gospel music. Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up, progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades. Christian country music, sometimes referred to as gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s, bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, and is popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, some proponents of standard hymns generally dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals. Gospel music in general is characterized by dominant vocals referencing lyrics of a Christian nature, subgenres include contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel, Southern gospel, and modern gospel music. Several forms of gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, tambourines, drums, bass guitar and, increasingly, electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier measure, several attempts have been made to describe the style of late 19th and early 20th century gospel songs in general

13.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements

14.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership

15.
Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American major record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. In 2004, Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group, craig Kallman is currently the chairman of Atlantic Records. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on December 14,2006, the brothers had become ardent fans of jazz and rhythm & blues music, amassing a collection of over 15,00078 RPM records. He convinced the family dentist, Dr Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and recruited Herb Abramson, Abramson had worked as a part-time A&R manager/producer for the jazz label National Records, signing Big Joe Turner and Billy Eckstine. He founded Jubilee Records in 1946, but had no interest in its most successful artists, so, in September 1947, he sold his share in Jubilee to his partner, Jerry Blaine, and invested $2500 in the new Atlantic label. When interviewed in 2009 she attributed her reputation to the companys chronic cash-flow shortage, most of the problems we had with artists were that they wanted advances, and that was very difficult for us. We were undercapitalized for a long time, the labels original office in the Ritz Hotel, Manhattan proved too expensive so they relocated to an $85 per month room in the Hotel Jefferson. In its early years Atlantic focused principally on modern jazz although it released some country and western and spoken word recordings. The union action forced Atlantic to use almost all its capital to cut and stockpile enough recordings to last through the ban, Ertegun and Abramson spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s scouring nightclubs in search of talent. Ertegun composed many songs under the alias A, in early 1949 a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun trying to obtain Stick McGhees Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, which was unavailable due to the closure of McGhees previous label. Ertegun knew Sticks younger brother Brownie McGhee, with whom Stick happened to be staying, so he contacted the McGhee brothers, Ertegun asked about artists royalties, which he paid, which surprised Columbia executives, who did not, which scuttled the deal. On the recommendation of broadcaster Willis Conover, Ertegun and Abramson went to see Ruth Brown at the Crystal Caverns club in Washington and she was badly injured in a car accident en route to New York but Atlantic supported her for nine months and then signed her. Her first release for the label So Long, cut at her second Atlantic session on May 25,1949 with the Eddie Condon band, was a major hit, reaching #6 on the R&B chart. Brown went on to more than eighty songs for the label, becoming the most prolific. So significant was Browns success to Atlantics fortunes that the label became known colloquially as The House That Ruth Built. The Clovers Dont You Know I Love You became the labels first R&B #1 in September 1951 and she hit #1 again in March–April 1952 with 5-10-15 Hours. After she left the label in 1961 Browns fortunes declined rapidly - within a few years was reduced to working as a cleaner and bus-driver to support her children. Brown eventually received a payment of $20,000 and founded a charity

16.
Arista Records
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/ˈɛ. rɪ. stə/ was a major American record label. It was a wholly owned unit of Sony Music Entertainment and was handled by Bertelsmann Music Group. The company operated under the RCA Music Group until 2011, the label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records. Until its demise in 2011, it was a distributor and promoter of albums throughout the United States. Today, the labels reissues and catalogue releases are handled by RCA Records, after being fired from CBS Records, Clive Davis was hired by Columbia Pictures in June 1974 to be a consultant for the companys record and music operations. The label was named Arista after New York Citys secondary school honor society, in early 1975, most of the artists who had been signed to Bell were let go, except David Cassidy, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and the 5th Dimension. Others, such as Suzi Quatro and Hot Chocolate, were farmed out to the Bell/Arista-distributed label, several Bell acts, such as Barry Manilow, the Bay City Rollers, and Melissa Manchester moved to Arista. The British Bell label kept that name for a couple of years before changing its name to Arista, the label was immortalized in the 1978 Rockpile song They Called It Rock, in the lyric, Arista says they love you/But the kids cant dance to this. In addition to Manilow, the Kinks, and Dionne Warwick, Arista signed Aretha Franklin in 1980, the labels most significant acquisition came in 1983 when Davis signed Warwicks cousin, Whitney Houston. Houston would eventually become Aristas biggest-selling recording artist, with sales of 200 million records worldwide, Arista had an imprint label in the 1970s called Arista Novus, which focused on contemporary jazz artists. A country music division, Career Records, was merged into the Arista Nashville division in 1997, Arista Austin was used in the late 1990s as a country label. Additionally, Arista was the North American distributor of Jive Records from 1981 until 1987, during the 1990s, Arista also distributed Logic, Rowdy and Heavenly Recordings. Looking to stave off bankruptcy, Columbia Pictures sold Arista to German-based Ariola Records in 1979, after Ariola purchased General Electrics RCA Records in 1986, the combined company was renamed Bertelsmann Music Group, though Aristas U. S. releases would not note BMG until 1987. Into the 1980s, Arista continued its success, including major UK act Secret Affair, over the years it acquired Northwestside Records, deConstruction Records, First Avenue Records, and Dedicated Records in the UK. In 1989, Arista entered into a joint venture with Antonio L. A. Reid and Babyface in the creation of LaFace Records record company of TLC, in 1993, Arista also entered into a joint-venture with Sean P. Diddy Combs to form Bad Boy Records. In 1997 Arista acquired Profile Records, the home of Run-D. M. C. in 1989, Arista signed Milli Vanilli, a duo consisting of Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan that was based in Germany. The label released its album, Girl You Know Its True, which was a remixed and re-edited version of All or Nothing. The album was certified platinum in the U. S. and charted five top-ten singles

17.
RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the initials of the labels former parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. It is the second oldest recording company in US history, after sister label Columbia Records, RCAs Canadian unit is Sonys oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression, kelly, Enrique Iglesias, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Giorgio Moroder, Jennifer Hudson, DAngelo, Pink, Tinashe, G-Eazy, Pitbull, Zayn and Wizkid. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor but retained use of the Victor Records name on their labels until the beginning of 1946 when the labels were finally switched over to RCA Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper His Masters Voice trademark, in Shanghai, China, in 1931, RCA Victors British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board, in September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm records sold to the public, calling them Program Transcriptions. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a commercial failure, during the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the dime store labels. The first was the short-lived Timely Tunes label in 1931 sold at Montgomery Ward, in 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8-inch record with a blue label. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10-inch label, another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced. The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels and Bluebird Records still survives eight decades after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued, RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward label during the 1930s. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for independent record labels, RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Readers Digest Association. RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings in the UK, RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the RCA and HMV labels in North America. During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed, the Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary. From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period

18.
Sweet Inspirations
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The Sweet Inspirations were an American R&B girl group founded by Emily Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney Houston, and sister of Lee Warrick. The line-up included Judy Guions, Marie Epps, Larry Drinkard, Nicholas Drinkard, Ann Moss, Lee, at that time, Sylvia Shemwell replaced Doris, while Cissy Houston took over from Dionne, with Dee Dee Warwick as the group’s official leader. The group sang backup for many stars, including Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Dee Dee left in 1965, when her solo career began to take off. She was replaced by Myrna Smith, Estelle Brown joined the team soon after, and the line-up that was to become an Atlantic recording group was set. In a recording session on March 28,1967, The Sweet Inspirations provided the back up vocals for Van Morrison on his classic hit Brown Eyed Girl and it was released in June 1967 and rose to No.10 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. In October 2007, Morrison was awarded a Million-Air certificate by BMI for 8 million air plays of Brown Eyed Girl, the Sweet Inspirations recorded by themselves for the first time in April 1967 for Atlantic Records. Within a month of their climb, the group began work on their second album - a gospel record entitled Songs Of Faith & Inspiration. It was released in 1968 under the name Cissy Drinkard & The Sweet Inspirations, on March 30,1968, the group scored their first and only top forty hit on the Billboard Top 40 Pop Chart with the song Sweet Inspiration on Atlantic Records. The record was on the chart for ten weeks and peaked at number 18, the group at this point was composed of Houston, Brown, Shernwell and Smith. In 1967, the group did backing vocals for the Jimi Hendrix single Burning of the Midnight Lamp which was featured on the album Electric Ladyland in 1968. They also backed Dusty Springfield on her album Dusty in Memphis, in 1969, the group recorded their fourth album, Sweets for my Sweet. The Sweet Inspirations also began recording and touring with Elvis Presley as both singers and his warm-up act, as well as doing occasional ‘live’ dates with Aretha Franklin. The association with Presley became well-publicized as he introduced the Sweet Inspirations on his telecast concerts. Houstons last recording session with The Sweet Inspirations was in October 1969, since she wanted to pursue a solo career, the session produced the group’s biggest R&B hit in some time. A Gamble & Huff composition, Gotta Find Me A Brand New Lover appeared on the fifth album Sweet Sweet Soul. Also included from that set are That’s The Way My Baby Is, Ann disappeared during a tour with Elvis Presley and did not return to the group. A final Atlantic session in June 1970 brought the group its last two singles for the label, This World, and Evidence, in 1973, Estelle, Myrna, and Sylvia recorded an album for Stax Records. They group broke up shortly thereafter, in 1978, the group sang backing vocals on Frankie Vallis No.1 hit Grease from the film of the same name

19.
Cissy Houston
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Emily Cissy Houston is an American soul and gospel singer. After a successful career singing backup for artists as Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin she embarked on a solo career. She is the mother of singer Whitney Houston, grandmother of Whitneys daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, aunt of singers Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, Houstons father Nitcholas Drinkard was born to Susan Bell Drinkard, of Dutch and African-American descent. His father John Drinkard, Jr. was of Native American descent, the Drinkards had owned a substantial amount of farmland in Blakely, Georgia, during a time when it was unusual for black people to own large portions of land. The asset was gradually depleted as they sold small portions of the land over time, after Houstons three oldest siblings were born, the family relocated to New Jersey during the Second Great Migration. Her parents emphasized the children getting educated and being involved in the church, in 1938, five-year-old Cissys mother Delia suffered a stroke and died of cerebral hemorrhage three years later. Her father died of cancer in 1951 when Houston was 18. Cissy went to live with her older sister Lee and her husband Mancel Warwick, the Warwicks had three children, a son, Mancel Warwick Jr. and two daughters Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick. Renowned soprano Leontyne Price is a Drinkard cousin, in 1955, Houston married Freddie Garland and had a son, Gary Garland, an NBA basketball player and DePaul University Athletic Hall of Famer. The Garlands divorced two years later, in 1959, she married John Russell Houston, Jr. a Newark City administrator and entertainment executive. The couple had a son Michael Houston, who became a songwriter, and a daughter, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin was an honorary aunt of Houstons daughter. In the 1990s, Houstons daughter Whitney began to struggle with drug addiction, Houston staged several interventions to get her daughter into rehabilitation and recovery programs. Her daughter cycled through recovery, relapse and rehabilitation programs, on February 11,2012, Whitney Houston died at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. After her daughters death, in an interview with the New Jersey TV station WWOR, Houston expressed her distaste of the coverage of related events. People have come here and there, dont know what theyre talking about. People I havent seen in 20 years … Here they come, think they know everything, but God has his way of taking care of all of it, and Im glad I know that. They really chopped on her, chopped on her … kept, kept, kept, Houston has six grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren. Houstons singing career began in 1938 when she joined her sister Anne and brothers Larry, Lee, later joined the group along with Ann Moss and Marie Epps, and the group was renamed The Drinkard Singers

20.
Dionne Warwick
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Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV-show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health. Having been in a partnership with songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest hit makers of the rock era. She is second only to Aretha Franklin as the female vocalist of all time. Marie Dionne Warrick, later Warwick, was born on December 12,1940 in East Orange, New Jersey, to Mancel Warrick and her mother was manager of the Drinkard Singers, and her father was a Pullman porter, chef, record promoter and CPA. She was named after her aunt on her mothers side, Dionne had a sister Delia who died in 2008 and a brother, Mancel Jr. who was killed in an accident in 1968 at the age of 21. Her parents were both African American, and she also has Native American, Brazilian and Dutch ancestry, after finishing East Orange High School in 1959, Warwick pursued her passion at the Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. She also landed work with her group singing backing vocals for recording sessions in New York City. During one session, Warwick met Burt Bacharach, who hired her to record demos featuring songs written by him, much of Warricks family were members of the Drinkard Singers, a renowned family gospel group and RCA recording artists that frequently performed throughout the New York metropolitan area. The original group consisted of Cissy, Anne, Larry, and Nicky, but later included Warwicks grandparents, Nicholas and Delia Drinkard, Marie instructed the group and they were managed by Lee. As they became successful, Lee and Marie began performing with the group, and they were augmented by pop/R&B singer Judy Clay. Elvis Presley eventually expressed an interest in having them join his touring entourage, Dionne began singing gospel as a child at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. After personnel changes, the Gospelaires became the group the Sweet Inspirations, which had some chart success. And we left and did the session, I wish I remembered the gentlemans name because he was responsible for the beginning of my professional career. The backstage encounter led to the group being asked to sing background sessions at recording studios in New York, the background vocal work would continue while Warwick pursued her studies at Hartt. According to a July 14,1967 article on Warwick from Time, Bacharach stated, She has a strong side. Musically, she was no play-safe girl, what emotion I could get away with. And what complexity, compared with the run of pop songs. During the session, Bacharach asked Warwick if she would be interested in recording demonstration recordings of his compositions to pitch the tunes to record labels

21.
Smokey Robinson
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William Smokey Robinson, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and front man of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as the Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motowns vice president. However, Robinson returned to the industry as a solo artist the following year. Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990 and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Robinson was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music. Smokey Robinson was born to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and his uncle Claude gave him the nickname Smokey Joe when he was a child. He attended Northern High School, where he was above average academically, at one point, he and Diana Ross lived several houses from each other on Belmont, he once said he has known Ross since she was about eight. Robinson said his interest in music started after hearing the groups Nolan Strong & the Diablos and Billy Ward, Robinson later listed Barrett Strong, a Detroit native, as a strong vocal influence. In 1955, he formed the first lineup of the Five Chimes with childhood friend Ronald White and classmate Pete Moore, two years later, in 1957, they were renamed the Matadors and included Bobby Rogers. Another member, Emerson Rogers, was replaced by Bobbys cousin Claudette Rogers, the groups guitarist, Marv Tarplin, joined them sometime in 1958. The Matadors began touring Detroit venues around this time and they later changed their name to the Miracles. In August 1957, Robinson and the Miracles met songwriter Berry Gordy after an audition for Brunswick Records. At that time during the audition, Robinson had brought along with him a Big 10 notebook with 100 songs he wrote while in high school, Gordy was impressed with Robinsons vocals and even more impressed with Robinsons ambitious songwriting. With his help, the Miracles released their first single, Got a Job and it was the beginning of a long and successful collaboration. During this time, Robinson attended college and started classes in January 1959, Robinson dropped out after only two months following the Miracles release of their first record. Gordy formed Tamla Records which was reincorporated as Motown. The Miracles became one of the first acts signed to the label, in point of fact, they had actually been with Gordy since before the formation of Motown Records. In late 1960, the recorded their first hit single, Shop Around

22.
King Curtis
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Curtis Ousley, who performed under the stage name King Curtis, was an American saxophone virtuoso known for rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, blues, funk and soul jazz. Variously a bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director, the son of Ethel Montgomery, he was born Curtis Montgomery in Fort Worth, Texas, and was adopted, with his sister Josephine, by Josie and William Ousley. Curtis Ousley attended I. M. Terrell High School, Curtis started playing saxophone at the age of twelve in the Fort Worth area. He took interest in musical genres including jazz, rhythm and blues. As a student pursuing music, he turned down college scholarships in order to join the Lionel Hampton Band, during his time with Hampton, he was able to write and arrange music and learn guitar. In 1952 Curtis decided to move to New York and became a musician, recording for such labels as Prestige, Enjoy, Capitol. He recorded with Nat Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, stylistically, Curtis took inspiration from saxophonists Lester Young, Louis Jordan, Illinois Jacquet, Earl Bostic, and Gene Ammons. Known for his syncopated and percussive style, he was versatile and powerful as a musician. He put together a group during his time as a musician that included Richard Tee, Cornell Dupree, Jerry Jemmott. Curtis enjoyed playing both jazz and rhythm and blues but decided he would make money as a rhythm. In a 1971 interview with Charlie Gillett he said, I love the authentic rhythm and blues more than anything, Buddy Holly hired him for session work, during which they recorded Reminiscing. Holly wrote this song, but gave Curtis the songwriting credit for flying down to the session and his best-known singles from this period are Soul Twist — his highest-charting single, reaching number one on the R&B chart and number 17 on the Billboard pop chart — and Soul Serenade. He provided backing on a number of songs for LaVern Baker, including her 1958 hit single I Cried a Tear, in 1965 he moved to Atlantic Records and recorded his most successful singles, Memphis Soul Stew and Ode to Billie Joe. He worked with The Coasters, and led Aretha Franklins backing band the Kingpins, the Kingpins opened for the Beatles during their 1965 performance at Shea Stadium. Curtis produced records, often working with Jerry Wexler and recorded for Groove Records during this period, including the Joe South song Games People Play with guitarist Duane Allman. In March 1971 he appeared with Aretha Franklin and the Kingpins at the Fillmore West, in July 1971, Curtis recorded saxophone solos on Its So Hard and I Dont Wanna Be a Soldier from John Lennons Imagine. Along with the Rimshots, he recorded the theme song for the 1971 hit television show Soul Train. On June 17,1971 Curtis played at the Montreux Jazz Festival, in the Casino Kursaal, with Champion Jack Dupree, backed by Cornell Dupree on guitar, Jerry Jemmott on bass and Oliver Jackson on drums

23.
Patti LaBelle
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Patricia Louise Holt-Edwards better known under the stage name Patti LaBelle, is an American singer, author, actress, and entrepreneur. LaBelle began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and front woman of the group, Patti LaBelle. After the group split in 1976, LaBelle began a solo career, starting with her critically acclaimed debut album. Less than two years later, in 1986, LaBelle scored with the album, Winner in You. LaBelle eventually won a 1992 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for her 1991 album, Burnin, followed by a second Grammy win for the live album and her 1990s albums, Burnin, Gems and Flame, continued her popularity with young R&B audiences throughout the decade. LaBelles success has extended as an actress with a role in the film, A Soldiers Story. In 1992, LaBelle starred in her own TV sitcom, Out All Night, a decade later, LaBelle hosted her own lifestyle TV show, Living It Up with Patti LaBelle on TV One. In 2015, LaBelle took part in the competition, Dancing with the Stars. In a career that has spanned fifty years, she has more than 50 million records worldwide. LaBelle has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Apollo Theater Hall of Fame, in 2005, the World Music Awards recognized her years in the music business by awarding her the Legend Award. Possessing the voice of a soprano, LaBelle was included in Rolling Stone on their list of 100 Greatest Singers, LaBelle is commonly identified as the Godmother of Soul. LaBelle was born Patricia Louise Holte on May 24,1944 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and her father was a railroad worker and her mother was a domestic. Despite enjoying her childhood, LaBelle would later write in her memoirs, Dont Block the Blessings, when Patti was seven, she was sexually molested by a family friend. At twelve, her parents came to an end though Patti remained close to her father. When she was fifteen, she won a talent competition at her high school and this success led to Patti forming her first singing group, the Ordettes, in 1960, with schoolmates Jean Brown, Yvonne Hogen and Johnnie Dawson. The group, with Patti as front woman, became an attraction until two of its members left to marry. In 1962, the Ordettes included three new members, Cindy Birdsong, Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx, the two girls having sung for another defunct vocal group. That year, they auditioned for record label owner Harold Robinson

24.
Eurythmics
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Eurythmics were a British music duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart. Stewart and Lennox were both previously in the band The Tourists, who split up in 1980, Eurythmics were formed that year in London. The duo released their first album, In the Garden, in 1981 to little fanfare, the title track was a worldwide hit, topping the charts in various countries including the US. The duo went on to release a string of hit singles, by this time Stewart was a sought-after record producer, while Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva. After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reunited to record their album, Peace. They reunited again in 2005 to release the single Ive Got a Life, as part of a new Eurythmics compilation album, Eurythmics have sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide. Lennox and Stewart met in 1975 in a restaurant in London and they first played together in 1976 in the punk rock band The Catch. After releasing one single as The Catch in 1977, the band evolved into The Tourists, Stewart and Lennox were also romantically involved. The Tourists achieved some success, but the experience was reportedly an unhappy one. Personal and musical tensions existed within the group, whose main songwriter was Peet Coombes and they were interested in creating pop music, but wanted freedom to experiment with electronics and the avant-garde. It was in a hotel in Wagga Wagga, Australia, while playing around with a portable mini-synthesizer that Lennox, the duo signed to RCA Records. At this time, Lennox and Stewart also split as a couple, during the period that Lennox and Stewart were in The Tourists, and later as Eurythmics, they were managed by Kenny Smith and Sandra Turnbull of Hyper Kinetics Ltd. They recorded their first album in Cologne with Conny Plank and this resulted in the album In the Garden, released in October 1981. The album mixed psychedelic, krautrock and electropop influences, and featured contributions from Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, drummer Clem Burke, Robert Görl, a couple of the songs were co-written by guitarist Roger Pomphrey. The album was not a commercial success, however, the three new singles they released that year all performed badly on initial release in the UK. Lennox apparently suffered at least one nervous breakdown during this period, Eurythmics commercial breakthrough came with their second album, Sweet Dreams, released in January 1983. The successful title track featured a dark and powerful sequenced synth bass line, the song reached no.2 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the years biggest sellers, and later topped the US charts. The bands fortunes changed immensely from this moment on, and Lennox quickly became a pop icon and their previous single, Love Is a Stranger, was also re-released and became another chart success

25.
James Brown
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James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and bandleader. The creator of music and a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance. In a career spanned six decades, he influenced the development of several music genres. Brown began his career as a singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined an R&B vocal group, the Gospel Starlighters, in which he was the lead singer. His success peaked in the 1960s with the live album Live at the Apollo and hit singles such as Papas Got a Brand New Bag, I Got You and Its a Mans Mans Mans World. During the late 1960s he moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms, by the early 1970s, Brown had fully established the funk sound after the formation of the J. B. s with records such as Get Up Sex Machine and The Payback. He also became noted for songs of social commentary, including the 1968 hit Say It Loud – Im Black, Brown continued to perform and record until his death from congestive heart failure in 2006. Brown recorded 16 singles that reached number one on the Billboard R&B charts and he also holds the record for the most singles listed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart which did not reach number one. Brown has received honors from many institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Joel Whitburns analysis of the Billboard R&B charts from 1942 to 2010, James Brown is ranked as number one in The Top 500 Artists. He is ranked seventh on the music magazine Rolling Stones list of its 100 greatest artists of all time, Rolling Stone has also cited Brown as the most sampled artist of all time. Brown was born on May 3,1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina, to 16-year-old Susie and 22-year-old Joseph Joe Gardner Brown, in a small wooden shack. Browns name was supposed to have been Joseph James Brown, Jr. however, his first and he later legally changed his name to remove Jr. His parents were black, in his autobiography, Brown stated that he also had Chinese and Native American ancestry. The Brown family lived in poverty in Elko, South Carolina. They later moved to Augusta, Georgia, when James was four or five and his family first settled at one of his aunts brothels. They later moved into a house shared with another aunt, Browns mother later left the family after a contentious marriage and moved to New York. Brown spent long stretches of time on his own, hanging out in the streets and he managed to stay in school until the sixth grade

26.
George Benson
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George Benson is an American musician, guitarist and singer-songwriter. He began his career at 21 as a jazz guitarist. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of jazz players such as Django Reinhardt. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing jazz with Jack McDuff. He then launched a solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, R&B singing, and scat singing. His album Breezin was certified triple-platinum, hitting no.1 on the Billboard album chart in 1976 and his concerts were well attended through the 1980s, and he still has a large following. He has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Benson was born and raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of seven, he first played the ukulele in a drug store. At the age of eight, he played guitar in a nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights. At the age of 10, he recorded his first single record, She Makes Me Mad, with RCA-Victor in New York, Benson attended and graduated from Schenley High School. As a youth he learned how to play straight-ahead instrumental jazz during a relationship performing for years with organist Jack McDuff. One of his early guitar heroes was country-jazz guitarist Hank Garland. At the age of 21, he recorded his first album as leader, The New Boss Guitar, Bensons next recording was Its Uptown with the George Benson Quartet, including Lonnie Smith on organ and Ronnie Cuber on baritone saxophone. Benson followed it up with The George Benson Cookbook, also with Lonnie Smith and Ronnie Cuber on baritone, Miles Davis employed Benson in the mid-1960s, featuring his guitar on Paraphernalia on his 1968 Columbia release, Miles in the Sky before going to Verve Records. Benson then signed with Creed Taylors jazz label CTI Records, where he recorded albums, with jazz heavyweights guesting, to some success. His 1974 release, Bad Benson, climbed to the top spot in the Billboard jazz chart, while the follow-ups, Good King Bad and Benson and Farrell, both reached the jazz top-three sellers. Benson played on sessions for other CTI artists during this time, including Freddie Hubbard and Stanley Turrentine. By the mid- to late-1970s, as he recorded for Warner Bros, Records, a whole new audience began to discover Benson

27.
Luther Vandross
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Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. He later became the singer of the group Change, which released its certified gold debut album, The Glow of Love. After Vandross left the group, he was signed to Epic Records as a solo artist and released his solo album, Never Too Much. His hit songs include Never Too Much, Here and Now, Any Love, Power of Love/Love Power, I Can Make It Better and For You to Love. Many of his songs were covers of music by other artists such as If This World Were Mine, Since I Lost My Baby, Superstar and Always. Duets such as The Closer I Get to You with Beyoncé, Endless Love with Mariah Carey, during his career, Vandross sold over 35 million records worldwide, and received eight Grammy Awards including Best Male R&B Vocal Performance four different times. He won a total of four Grammy Awards in 2004 including the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for a song recorded not long before his death, Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was born on April 20,1951 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York City. He was the child and second son of Mary Ida Vandross and Luther Vandross. His father was an upholsterer and singer, and his mother was a nurse, Vandross was raised on Manhattans Lower East Side in the NYCHA Alfred E. Smith Houses public housing development. At the age of three, having his own phonograph, he himself to play the piano by ear. Vandrosss father died of diabetes when Vandross was eight years old and his family moved to the Bronx when he was nine. His sisters, Patricia Pat and Ann began taking Vandross to the Apollo Theater and to a theater in Brooklyn to see Dionne Warwick, Patricia sang with the vocal group The Crests, and was featured on the songs 16 Candles and Sweetest One. In high school, Vandross performed in a group, Shades of Jade, during his early years in show business he appeared several times at the Apollos infamous amateur night and was booed by the audience. While a member of a workshop, Listen My Brother, he was invoiced in the singles Only Love Can Make a Better World. He appeared in the first series of Sesame Street during 1969, Vandross graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1969, and attended Western Michigan University for a year before dropping out to continue pursuing a career in music. He added backing vocals to Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway in 1972, Vandross founded the first Patti LaBelle fan club, of which he was president. Vandross sang on Delores Halls Hall-Mark album and he sang with her on the song Whos Gonna Make It Easier for Me, which he wrote, and he contributed another song, In This Lonely Hour. Having co-written Fascination for David Bowies Young Americans, he went on to tour with him as a back-up vocalist in September 1974, Vandross wrote Everybody Rejoice for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz

28.
Mahalia Jackson
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Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful voice, she was referred to as The Queen of Gospel. She became one of the most influential singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as the single most powerful woman in the United States. She recorded about 30 albums during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen golds—million-sellers, I sing Gods music because it makes me feel free, Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues and she was born on October 26,1911, as Mahala Jackson and nicknamed Halie. Jackson grew up in the Black Pearl section of the Carrollton neighborhood of uptown New Orleans, the three-room dwelling on Pitt Street housed thirteen people and a dog. This included Little Mahala, her brother Roosevelt Hunter, whom they called Peter, and her mother Charity Clark, several aunts and cousins lived in the house as well. Aunt Mahala was given the nickname Duke after proving herself the boss of the family. The extended family consisted of her mothers siblings, Isabell, Mahala, Boston, Porterfield, Hannah, Alice, Rhoda, Bessie, their children, grandchildren, and patriarch Rev. Paul Clark, a former slave. Jacksons father, John A. Jackson Sr. was a stevedore and he fathered five other children besides Mahalia, Wilmon and then Yvonne, Edna, Pearl and Johnny Jr. Her fathers sister, Jeanette Jackson-Burnett, and her husband, Josie, were vaudeville entertainers, at birth, Jackson suffered from genu varum, or bowed legs. The doctors wanted to perform surgery by breaking her legs, Jacksons mother would rub her legs down with greasy dishwater. The condition never stopped young Jackson from performing her dance steps for the woman for whom her mother. Jackson was four years old when her mother Charity died, leaving her family to decide who would raise Halie, Aunt Duke assumed this responsibility, and the children were forced to work from sun-up to sun-down. Aunt Duke would always inspect the house using the white glove method, if the house was not cleaned properly, Jackson was beaten. If one of the other relatives could not do their chores or clean at their job, Jackson loved to sing and church is where she loved to sing the most. Her Aunt Bell told her one day she would sing in front of royalty

29.
Whitney Houston
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Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time, Houston is one of pop musics best-selling music artists of all-time, with an estimated 170–200 million records sold worldwide. She released seven albums and two soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive No.1 Billboard Hot 100 hits and she is the second artist behind Elton John and the only woman to have two number-one Billboard 200 Album awards on the Billboard magazine year-end charts. Houstons debut album, Whitney Houston, became the debut album by a woman in history. Rolling Stone named it the best album of 1986, and ranked it at number 254 on the magazines list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Her second studio album, Whitney, became the first album by a woman to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart, Houstons first acting role was as the star of the feature film The Bodyguard. The films original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year and its lead single, I Will Always Love You, won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became the best-selling single by a woman in music history. With the album, Houston became the first act to sell more than a million copies of an album within a week period under Nielsen SoundScan system. The album makes her the top female act in the top 10 list of the albums of all time. Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to their soundtracks, including the films Waiting to Exhale, the Preachers Wife soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history. On February 11,2012, Houston was found dead in her guest room at the Beverly Hilton, in Beverly Hills, the official coroners report showed that she had accidentally drowned in the bathtub, with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. News of her death coincided with the 2012 Grammy Awards and featured prominently in American, Whitney Houston was born on August 9,1963 in what was then a middle-income neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Army serviceman and entertainment executive John Russell Houston, Jr. and her elder brother Michael is a singer, and her elder half-brother is former basketball player Gary Garland. Her parents were both African American, through her mother, Houston was a first cousin of singers Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick. Her godmother was Darlene Love and her aunt was Aretha Franklin. Houston was raised a Baptist, but was exposed to the Pentecostal church. After the 1967 Newark riots, the moved to a middle-class area in East Orange, New Jersey

30.
George Michael
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Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, known professionally as George Michael, was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham. He was best known for his work in the 1980s and 1990s, including hit singles such as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Last Christmas, and albums such as Faith and Listen Without Prejudice Vol.1. Up to the time of his death, Michael sold more than 115 million records worldwide and his breakthrough duo Wham. sold 28 million records between 1982 and 1986, and his debut solo album Faith sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Michael achieved seven number one singles in the UK and eight number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, including Careless Whisper and Praying for Time. He ranks among the best-selling British acts of all time, Michael, who came out as gay in 1998, was an active LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser. In 2004, the Radio Academy named Michael the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004, the documentary A Different Story covered his career and personal life. Michaels first tour in 15 years, the worldwide 25 Live tour, in the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael, aged 53, was found dead in bed at his Oxfordshire home. A coroners report attributed his death to natural causes, Michael was born in East Finchley on 25 June 1963. His father, Kyriacos Jack Panayiotou, a Greek Cypriot restaurateur, had emigrated to Britain in the 1950s, Michaels mother, Lesley Angold, was an English dancer, and his maternal grandmother was Jewish. Michael spent most of his childhood in Kingsbury, London, in the home his parents soon after his birth. His older sisters are Yioda and Melanie, while he was in his early teens, the family moved to Radlett. There, Michael attended Bushey Meads School in Bushey, where he befriended his future Wham. partner Andrew Ridgeley, the two had the same career ambition of being musicians. Michael busked on the London Underground, performing such as 39 by Queen. His involvement in the business began with his working as a DJ, playing at clubs and local schools around Bushey, Stanmore. This was followed by the formation of a ska band called The Executive, with Ridgeley, Ridgeleys brother Paul, Andrew Leaver. Michael formed the duo Wham. with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981, the bands first album Fantastic reached No.1 in the UK in 1983 and produced a series of top 10 singles including Young Guns, Wham Rap. and Club Tropicana. Their second album, Make It Big, reached No.1 on the charts in the US, Michael sang on the original Band Aid recording of Do They Know Its Christmas. And donated the profits from Last Christmas/Everything She Wants to charity and he also contributed background vocals to David Cassidys 1985 hit The Last Kiss, as well as Elton Johns 1985 successes Nikita and Wrap Her Up

31.
Michael McDonald (singer)
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Michael McDonald is an American singer, songwriter, keyboardist and record producer. McDonalds music career more than forty years. His early career included singing with Steely Dan and he joined The Doobie Brothers in 1976 and remained an integral member until 1982, after which he released the first of eight solo albums. During his career, he has collaborated with a number of artists, including Kenny Loggins, Van Halen, Patti LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, Toto, Grizzly Bear. He has also recorded for television and film soundtracks, during his career, McDonald has won five Grammy Awards. Michael McDonald was born on February 12,1952, into an Irish American Catholic family in Ferguson, Missouri, McDonald attended McCluer High School where he played in local bands including Mike and the Majestics, Jerry Jay and the Sheratons, the Reebtoors and The Guild. He was discovered while playing with a group called Blue and moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1974, McDonald became a member of Steely Dans touring group, singing lead and backing vocals. He also became one of the many in-studio adjunct members of the band and he appeared on subsequent Steely Dan recordings including 1976s The Royal Scam and 1977s Aja. He also played keyboards on some Steely Dan tracks, McDonald continued to provide backing vocals for Steely Dan through their 1980 release, Gaucho. In 2006, he joined Steely Dan on the summer tour. McDonald co-wrote You Belong to Me with Carly Simon, which appeared on the album Livin on the Fault Line, McDonald reunited as a guest performer with the Doobie Brothers several times since the bands initial dissolution in 1982. He re-teamed with the Doobie Brothers for the track Dont Say Goodbye on the thirteenth studio album. In March 2014, he reunited with the Doobie Brothers to record an album featuring the greatest hits of the Doobies 40-plus-year career. This project was completed in conjunction with Sony Music Nashville, on the album, McDonald shares lead vocals with Sara Evans for What a Fool Believes, Love and Theft for Takin it to the Streets, and Amanda Sudano-Ramirez for You Belong to Me. The album, titled Southbound, was released on November 4,2014, on November 5,2014, McDonald and the Doobie Brothers were featured musical guests on the 47th annual CMA Awards to celebrate the release of Southbound. They were joined by Hunter Hayes, Jennifer Nettles, and Hillary Scott in their performance of Listen to the Music, at the end of the awards ceremony, they were also joined by host Brad Paisley for Takin It to the Streets. After the Doobies first farewell tour, McDonald released his first solo album, If Thats What It Takes. He continued to collaborate with artists during this period

32.
Lauryn Hill
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Lauryn Noelle Hill is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She is best known for being a member of the Fugees and for her acclaimed solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Raised mostly in South Orange, New Jersey, Hill began singing with her family during her childhood. In high school, Hill was approached by Pras Michel to start a band and they renamed themselves the Fugees and released the albums Blunted on Reality and the Grammy Award-winning The Score. Hills tumultuous romantic relationship with Jean led to the split of the band in 1997, the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill remains Hills only solo studio album. It received massive critical acclaim, showcasing a representation of life and relationships, the album debuted at number one on the U. S. Billboard 200 and has sold approximately eight million copies there. It included the singles Doo Wop, Ex-Factor, and Everything Is Everything, at the 41st Grammy Awards, the record earned her five awards, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist. During this time she won numerous awards and became a common sight on the cover of magazines. Soon afterward, Hill dropped out of the eye, dissatisfied with the music industry. Her last full-length recording, the live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, sharply divided critics and sold poorly compared to her first album, Hills subsequent activity, which includes the release of a few songs and occasional festival appearances, has been sporadic and erratic. Her behavior has sometimes caused audience dissatisfaction, a reunion with her former group did not last long and her music, as well as a series of public statements she has issued, has become critical of pop culture and societal institutions. Hill has six children, five of whom are with Rohan Marley, in 2012, she pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failure to pay federal income taxes, and in 2013, served a three-month prison sentence. Lauryn Noelle Hill was born on May 26,1975, in East Orange, New Jersey to English teacher Valerie Hill and computer and she has one older brother named Malaney. Her Baptist family moved to New York and Newark for short periods until settling in South Orange and she had a middle-class upbringing, knowing both many white Jewish families and many black ones. Future actor Zach Braff lived in the neighborhood, and she attended his Bar Mitzvah, Hill has said of her musically oriented family, there were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played piano, my father sang, and we were surrounded in music. Her father sang in nightclubs and at weddings

33.
Respect (song)
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Respect is a song written and originally released by American recording artist Otis Redding in 1965. The song became a 1967 hit and signature song for R&B singer Aretha Franklin, the music in the two versions is significantly different, and through a few minor changes in the lyrics, the stories told by the songs have a different flavor. Reddings version is a plea from a man, who will give his woman anything she wants. He wont care if she does him wrong, as long as he gets his due respect, however, Franklins version is a declaration from a strong, confident woman, who knows that she has everything her man wants. She never does him wrong, and demands his respect, Franklins version adds the R-E-S-P-E-C-T chorus and the backup singers refrain of Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me. In 2002, the Library of Congress honored Franklins version by adding it to the National Recording Registry and it was placed number five on Rolling Stone magazines list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America, Franklin included a live recording on the album Aretha in Paris. At first a ballad, it was written by Redding for Speedo Sims, who intended to record it with his band, Redding rewrote the lyrics and sped up the rhythm. Speedo then went with band to the Muscle Shoals studios, but was unable to produce a good version, Redding then decided to sing the song himself, which Speedo agreed to. Redding also promised to credit Speedo on the notes, but this never happened, Speedo. The song was included on Reddings third studio album, Otis Blue, the album became widely successful, even outside of his largely R&B and blues fan base. When released in the summer of 1965, the reached the top five on Billboards Black Singles Chart. At the time, the song became Reddings second largest crossover hit, Redding performed it at the Monterey Pop Festival. The two versions of Respect as performed by Otis Redding originally and later re-imagined by Aretha Franklin are significantly different, while both songs have similar styles and tempos the writers and performers of the lyrics clearly had two different messages in mind when producing these songs. The songs only differ lyrically in the refrains while the verses by, Reddings short refrain comes at the end of each verse and leads into the next. Reddings version was written from the perspective of a man who can only look forward to getting home. His version is less a plea for respect and more a comment on a feeling of worth in his work life. The original version of Respect was produced by Steve Cropper, who also played instrumentals for the hit track along with William Bell and Earl Sims on backup vocals

34.
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
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A Natural Woman is a 1967 single released by American soul singer Aretha Franklin on the Atlantic label. The song was co-written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, with input from Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler, the record was a big hit for Franklin, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became a standard song for her. Franklin also included a recording on the album Aretha in Paris in 1968. Versions have also performed and recorded by King herself, Mary J. Blige, Celine Dion. At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, Aretha Franklin performed the song to honor award-recipient Carole King, written by the celebrated partnership of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, the song was inspired by Atlantic Records co-owner and producer Jerry Wexler. As recounted in his autobiography, Wexler, a student of African-American musical culture, had been mulling over the concept of the natural man and he shouted out to her that he wanted a natural woman song for Aretha Franklins next album. In thanks, Goffin and King granted Wexler a co-writing credit, peggy Lee released a version on her 1969 album A Natural Woman. It was recorded by Carole King on her landmark 1971 album Tapestry, Celine Dion recorded the song in 1995 for the Tapestry Revisited, A Tribute to Carole King album, and released it as a single. Mary J. Blige also recorded the song that year for New York Undercover, beccy Cole covered the song live on her 2007 Live @ Lizottes album. Carole King and Gloria Estefan performed the song in May 2009 in the Shes Got a Friend concerts at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, the audio from one of the performances was included on some editions of Estefans 2013 album, The Standards. In 2012, Christine Anu covered the song on her album, Rewind, in December 2015, Aretha Franklin gave a universally acclaimed performance at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors during the section for honoree Carole King. A Natural Woman was released as a single by Celine Dion in November 1995 in North America. It was featured on an album to Carole King, called Tapestry Revisited. Later, Dion included this track on most editions of her 1996 album Falling into You, the track was produced by David Foster. Dions version enjoyed a success on the adult contemporary charts, reaching number 4 in Canada. In 2008, the song was featured on the US version of My Love, when Falling in Love won the Grammy for Album of the year in 1998, the song became the first to appear on two Album of the Year winners - following Tapestrys success in 1971. On April 14,1998, Dion, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan and Carole King performed the song during a VH1 Divas concert at the Beacon Theatre, New York. The five vocalists were recruited by the music network VH1 to raise money for Save the Music

35.
Think (Aretha Franklin song)
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Think is a song performed by American singer Aretha Franklin. It was released as single in 1968, from her Aretha Now album, the song, a feminist anthem, reached No.7 on Billboard Hot 100, becoming Franklins seventh top 10 hit in the United States. The song also reached number 1 on the magazines Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles, the song was written by Franklin and Ted White. Franklin re-recorded the song in 1989 for the album Through the Storm, pitchfork Media placed it at number 15 on its list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s. The song is performed by a lead vocalist, backing vocalists, Franklin lip-synched to a new, longer version of the song in a musical sequence of the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Because Franklin was not used to lip-syncing, this required a number of takes. Franklin re-recorded the song for Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a service announcement during the late 1980s. On November 5,1999, Think was performed live by Mel B, Jocelyn Brown, and Beverley Knight at the Music of the Millennium awards, Aretha Franklins recording features in the movie Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason. A sound-alike was featured in a 2010 TV commercial for Big Lots, the piano intro was sampled by hip-hop trio 3rd Bass on The Gas Face from The Cactus Album. On May 14,2012, Think was performed by Cleo King on the TV series Mike & Molly during the wedding songs, Think was covered by Canadian child voice actress Michelle Creber on her 2012 album Timeless, Songs of a Century. In 2015, Think was heard in the trailer to Seth MacFarlanes Ted 2. The song was performed by five American Idol contestants, Diana DeGarmo in season 3, Katharine McPhee in season 5, LaKisha Jones in season 6, Siobhan Magnus in season 9, and Adam Brock in season 11. McPhees version of the song was released as a single from the American Idol 5. The song became a minor Internet hit for McPhee—it was her first song to chart in the Pop 100, the song was also performed by season 3s Fantasia Barrino in her first week in Hollywood. In Season 6, LaKisha Jones performed the song in her initial audition, australian Idol season 6 Finalist Chrislyn Hamilton also performed the song during Top 12 and received a Touchdown. Amelia Lily performed this track on Season 8, Episode 24 of The X Factor, the finalist of Polish version of X Factor Joanna Kwaśnik performed the song on Season 2, Episode 10. Song Review at AllMusic Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

36.
1960s in music
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In North America and Europe the decade was particularly revolutionary in terms of popular music, as it saw the evolution of rock. In the early-1960s, rock and roll in its purest form was gradually overtaken by pop rock, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock, and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. The country- and folk-influenced style associated with the latter-half of 1960s rock music spawned a generation of popular singer-songwriters who wrote and performed their own work. Towards the decades end, genres such as Baroque pop, sunshine pop, bubblegum pop, from a classical point of view, the 1960s were also an important decade as they saw the development of experimental, jazz and contemporary classical music, notably minimalism and free improvisation. In Asia, various trends marked the popular music of the 1960s, in Japan, the decade saw the rise in popularity of several Western popular music groups such as The Beatles. The success of music and bands in the Japan started a new generation, known as Group Sounds. In South America, genres such as bossa nova, Nueva canción, Rock music began leaving its mark, and achieved success in the 1960s. Additionally, salsa grew popular towards the end of the decade, in the 1960s cumbia entered Chile and left a long-lasting impact on tropical music in that country. In the late 1950s, a culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls. Beat bands were influenced by American bands of the era, such as Buddy Holly. Among the most successful acts from Birmingham were the Spencer Davis Group. The first non-Liverpool, non-Brian Epstein-managed band to break through in the UK were Freddie and the Dreamers, who were based in Manchester, as were Hermans Hermits. By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started with groups like the Beatles drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues. Initially, they reinterpreted standard American tunes, playing for dancers doing the twist and these groups eventually infused their original rock compositions with increasingly complex musical ideas and a distinctive sound. In mid-1962 the Rolling Stones started as one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues influence, along with bands like the Animals and the Yardbirds. During 1963, the Beatles and other groups, such as the Searchers. British rock broke through to mainstream popularity in the United States in January 1964 with the success of the Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand was the bands first No.1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British Invasion of the American music charts

37.
Honorific nicknames in popular music
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These patterns of naming were transferred to rock and roll when it emerged in the 1950s. There was a series of attempts to find the King of Rock n Roll and this has been seen as part of a process of the appropriation of credit for innovation of the then new music by a white establishment. Similar honorific nicknames have been given in other genres, including Aretha Franklin, madonna and Michael Jackson have been closely associated with the terms Queen and King of Pop since the 1980s. They have been strongly promulgated and contested by various artists and occasionally disowned or played down by their subjects, some notable honorific nicknames are in general usage and commonly identified with particular individuals. Jazz royalty Sobriquet Teen idol A denotes template, i. e. for sources where a reference is alluded to, or given in part and their factuality, thus, may or may not be in question. B denotes template, i. e. for source that needs to be translated. C denotes template, i. e. for source very possibly being unreliable D denotes template, i. e. for source that have been checked, E denotes template, i. e. clarification of wording or interpretation is needed. F denotes template, i. e. source cannot be verified, G denotes template The discussed artists themselves and/or only one cited person

38.
Billboard (magazine)
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Billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group, a division of Eldridge Industries. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events and it is also known for its music charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200, tracking the most popular singles and albums in different genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows, Billboard was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegens interest in 1900 for $500, in the 1900s, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs and burlesque shows. It also created a service for travelling entertainers. Billboard began focusing more on the industry as the jukebox, phonograph. Many topics it covered were spun-off into different magazines, including Amusement Business in 1961 to cover outdoor entertainment so that it could focus on music. After Donaldson died in 1925, Billboard was passed down to his children and Hennegans children, until it was sold to investors in 1985. The first issue of Billboard was published in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 1,1894 by William Donaldson, initially, it covered the advertising and bill posting industry and was called Billboard Advertising. At the time, billboards, posters and paper advertisements placed in public spaces were the means of advertising. Donaldson handled editorial and advertising, while Hennegan, who owned Hennegan Printing Co. managed magazine production, the first issues were just eight pages long. The paper had columns like The Bill Room Gossip and The Indefatigable, a department for agricultural fairs was established in 1896. The title was changed to The Billboard in 1897, after a brief departure over editorial differences, Donaldson purchased Hennegans interest in the business in 1900 for $500, to save it from bankruptcy. That May, Donaldson changed it from a monthly to a paper with a greater emphasis on breaking news. He improved editorial quality and opened new offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London and he also re-focused the magazine on outdoor entertainment like fairs, carnivals, circuses, vaudeville and burlesque shows. A section devoted to circuses was introduced in 1900, followed by more prominent coverage of events in 1901. Billboard also covered topics including regulation, a lack of professionalism, economics and it had a stage gossip column covering the private lives of entertainers, a tent show section covering traveling shows and a sub-section called Freaks to order. According to The Seattle Times, Donaldson also published articles attacking censorship, praising productions exhibiting good taste

39.
Billboard Hot 100
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The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for singles, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales, radio play and online streaming, the weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday, when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming data, is available on a real-time basis. A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by Billboard on Tuesdays, as of the issue for the week ending on April 15,2017, the Hot 100 has had 1,061 different number one hits. The current number one song is Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, prior to 1955, Billboard did not have a unified, all-encompassing popularity chart, instead measuring songs by individual metrics. At the start of the era in 1955, three such charts existed, Best Sellers in Stores was the first Billboard chart, established in 1936. This chart ranked the biggest selling singles in retail stores, as reported by merchants surveyed throughout the country, Most Played by Jockeys was Billboards original airplay chart. It ranked the most played songs on United States radio stations, as reported by radio disc jockeys, Most Played in Jukeboxes ranked the most played songs in jukeboxes across the United States. On the week ending November 12,1955, Billboard published The Top 100 for the first time, the Top 100 combined all aspects of a singles performance, based on a point system that typically gave sales more weight than radio airplay. The Best Sellers In Stores, Most Played by Jockeys and Most Played in Jukeboxes charts continued to be published concurrently with the new Top 100 chart. The week ending July 28,1958 was the publication of the Most Played By Jockeys and Top 100 charts. On August 4,1958, Billboard premiered one main all-genre singles chart, the Hot 100 quickly became the industry standard and Billboard discontinued the Best Sellers In Stores chart on October 13,1958. The Billboard Hot 100 is still the standard by which a songs popularity is measured in the United States, the Hot 100 is ranked by radio airplay audience impressions as measured by Nielsen BDS, sales data compiled by Nielsen Soundscan and streaming activity provided by online music sources. There are several component charts that contribute to the calculation of the Hot 100. Charts are ranked by number of gross audience impressions, computed by cross-referencing exact times of radio airplay with Arbitron listener data. Hot Singles Sales, the top selling singles compiled from a sample of retail store, mass merchant and internet sales reports collected, compiled. The chart is released weekly and measures sales of commercial singles. With the decline in sales of singles in the US

40.
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
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I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is the eleventh studio album by American singer Aretha Franklin. Released on March 10,1967 by Atlantic Records, It went to number 2 on the Billboard album chart and it was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1967. The album included two singles, Respect was a #1 single on Billboards Hot 100 Pop singles chart. In 1967, Rolling Stone chided the album for the lack of versatility on the part of the sidemen, the drums werent hard enough, the guitar was weak, and the production lacked polish. In 2002, though, they placed the album at #1 on their Women in Rock,50 Essential Albums list, in 2003, the album was ranked #83 on Rolling Stones list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Q magazine included the album in their list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever, Q also gave the album 4 stars and said. Came out in May 1967 and was number 2 in America within weeks, now it stands untainted by time. She seemed so much a force of nature its strange to recall that this was actually her tenth album. Side one Respect –2,29 Drown in My Own Tears –4,07 I Never Loved a Man –2,51 Soul Serenade –2,39 Dont Let Me Lose This Dream –2,23 Baby, Baby, Baby –2,54 Side two Dr

White House
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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U. S. president since John Adams in 1800, the term White House is often used to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in The White Ho

Memphis, Tennessee
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Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf, Memphis had a population of 653,450 in 2013, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee. It is the largest city on the Mississippi River,

1.
From top to bottom and left to right: Downtown Memphis skyline, Beale Street, Graceland, Orpheum Theatre, Beale Street Landing, and the Hernando de Soto Bridge

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A Mississippian era priest (Digital illustration, 2004)

3.
Memphis in the mid-1850s

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Cotton merchants on Union Avenue (1937)

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
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Bloomfield Hills is a city located in Metro Detroits northern suburbs in Oakland County in the U. S. state of Michigan,20.2 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. The city is almost completely surrounded by Bloomfield Township, as of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,869. What is now Bloomfield Hills was an area until the turn of the 20th ce

1.
Gregor S. and Elizabeth B. Affleck House

2.
Location in the state of Michigan

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Cranbrook gardens

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Kirk in the Hills

Detroit
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Detroit is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Michigan, the fourth-largest city in the Midwest and the largest city on the United States–Canada border. It is the seat of Wayne County, the most populous county in the state, the municipality of Detroit had a 2015 estimated population of 677,116, making it the 21st-most populous city in the

1.
From top to bottom, left to right: Downtown Detroit skyline and the Detroit River, Fox Theatre, Dorothy H. Turkel House in Palmer Woods, Belle Isle Conservatory, The Spirit of Detroit, Fisher Building, Eastern Market, Old Main at Wayne State University, Ambassador Bridge, and the Detroit Institute of Arts

2.
Ste. Anne de Détroit, founded in 1701 by French colonists, is the second-oldest continuously operating Catholic parish in the United States. The present church was completed in 1887.

3.
A 4 p.m. change of work shift at the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Highland Park, Michigan, 1910s

4.
Looking south down Woodward Avenue, with the Detroit skyline in the distance, July 1942

Michigan
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Michigan /ˈmɪʃᵻɡən/ is a state in the Great Lakes and Midwestern regions of the United States. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, Michigan is the tenth most populous of the 50 United States, with the 11th most extensive total area. Its capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit, Michigan is the only state t

1.
Père Marquette and the Indians (1869), Wilhelm Lamprecht

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Flag

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Approximate area of Michigan highlighted in Guillaume de L'Isle 's 1718 map

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Lumbering pines in the late 1800s

Glynn Turman
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Glynn Russell Turman is an American stage, television, and film actor as well as a writer, director, and producer. He recently portrayed Jeremiah Kaan on the Showtime series House of Lies, lonne Elder III, John Fiedler and Diana Sands. While he did not play the role when it transferred to film in 1961 and he made his Los Angeles stage debut in Vinn

1.
Turman in 2007.

C. L. Franklin
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Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, better known as Bishop C. L. Franklin or The Reverend C. L. Franklin, was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist. Known as the man with the Million-Dollar Voice, Franklin served as the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, Franklin was also the father of American singer–songwriter Aret

1.
Franklin in 1975.

Erma Franklin
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Erma Vernice Franklin was an American gospel and R&B singer. Franklin was the sister of American singer/musician Aretha Franklin. Franklins best known recording was the version of Piece of My Heart, written and produced by Bert Berns. The better-known cover version of the song was recorded the following year by Big Brother. Erma Franklin was born i

Rhythm and blues
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated as R&B or RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy. Lyrics focus heavily on the the

Soul music
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Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, Soul music became popular for dancing and listening in the United States, where record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights

1.
James Brown

2.
Al Green, influential soul performer

3.
Levi Stubbs singing lead with the Four Tops in 1966

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Isaac Hayes performing in 1973

Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition fro

1.
The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that the term "pop" refers to music performed by such artists as the Rolling Stones (pictured here in a 2006 performance)

2.
According to several sources, MTV helped give rise to pop stars such as Michael Jackson and Madonna; and Jackson and Madonna helped make MTV.

Gospel music
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Gospel music is a music genre in Christian music. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music varies according to culture. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, Gospel music usually has dominant vocals with Christian lyrics. Gospel musi

1.
Mahalia Jackson in the Concertgebouw concert hall, The Netherlands

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Exemplification of gospel music: an open Bible and a CD, which represent the gospel in written and musical forms

Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrh

1.
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) is considered one of the pivotal musicians in jazz for his contributions as a trumpet player, composer and singer.

4.
In the late 18th-century painting The Old Plantation, African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion.

Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Reco

1.
Original home of Columbia in Washington, D.C., in 1889

3.
A Columbia type AT cylinder graphophone, first released in 1898

4.
This article is about the American record label active worldwide except in Japan. For the Columbia label which was a unit of EMI, see Columbia Graphophone Company. For the Columbia label in Japan, see Nippon Columbia.

Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American major record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. In 2004, Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group, craig Kallman is currently the chairman of Atlantic Records. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on Dece

1.
"Weird Al" Yankovic edits the Atlantic Records' Wikipedia page to read "YOU SUCK!" in the music video for the song " White & Nerdy "

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Atlantic Records logo as of 2015.

Arista Records
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/ˈɛ. rɪ. stə/ was a major American record label. It was a wholly owned unit of Sony Music Entertainment and was handled by Bertelsmann Music Group. The company operated under the RCA Music Group until 2011, the label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records. Until its demise in 2011, it was a distributor and promoter

1.
Primary businesses

RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the init

1.
Label of an RCA Victor 78 RPM record from the 1950s; RCA manufactured 78s alongside the 45 until 1958.

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Label of an RCA Victor 45 RPM record from the 1950s; RCA used this label for its 45 RPM records from 1954 to at least 1964.

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RCA used this label for its American 45 RPM records during the Dynagroove era.

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RCA's LP label during the Dynagroove era was also used for 45 RPM records of the mid-to-late 1960s in countries such as Argentina, where this single was pressed.

Sweet Inspirations
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The Sweet Inspirations were an American R&B girl group founded by Emily Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney Houston, and sister of Lee Warrick. The line-up included Judy Guions, Marie Epps, Larry Drinkard, Nicholas Drinkard, Ann Moss, Lee, at that time, Sylvia Shemwell replaced Doris, while Cissy Houston took over from Dionne, with Dee Dee Warwick as

1.
The Sweet Inspirations in 1967

Cissy Houston
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Emily Cissy Houston is an American soul and gospel singer. After a successful career singing backup for artists as Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin she embarked on a solo career. She is the mother of singer Whitney Houston, grandmother of Whitneys daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, aunt of singers Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, Houstons father Nitcholas

1.
Cissy Houston in 1975

Dionne Warwick
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Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV-show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health. Having been in a partnership with songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest hit makers of the rock era. She is second on

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Warwick in 2012

2.
Warwick with First Lady Pat Nixon, 1971

Smokey Robinson
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William Smokey Robinson, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and front man of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as the Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motowns vice pre

2.
Conductor Zubin Mehta laughs with singers Dolly Parton and Robinson during a reception for the Kennedy Center honorees in the East Room of the White House on Sunday, December 3, 2006.

King Curtis
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Curtis Ousley, who performed under the stage name King Curtis, was an American saxophone virtuoso known for rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, blues, funk and soul jazz. Variously a bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director, the son of Ethel Montgomery, he was born Curtis Montgomery in Fort Worth, Texas, and

1.
King Curtis

Patti LaBelle
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Patricia Louise Holt-Edwards better known under the stage name Patti LaBelle, is an American singer, author, actress, and entrepreneur. LaBelle began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and front woman of the group, Patti LaBelle. After the group split in 1976, LaBelle began a solo career, starting with her critically acclaimed debut album

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LaBelle in 2008.

2.
LaBelle (c) with her Labelle band mates Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash in a 1974 promotional photo.

3.
LaBelle promoting AIDS awareness in the 1980s.

Eurythmics
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Eurythmics were a British music duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart. Stewart and Lennox were both previously in the band The Tourists, who split up in 1980, Eurythmics were formed that year in London. The duo released their first album, In the Garden, in 1981 to little fanfare, the title track was a worldwide hit, topping th

1.
Eurythmics at Rock am Ring in Nürburgring, Germany, 1987

2.
Annie Lennox performing during Revenge Tour in 1986

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Dave Stewart at Rock am Ring in Germany, 1987.

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Stewart and Lennox performing on The Today show in 2005.

James Brown
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James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and bandleader. The creator of music and a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance. In a career spanned six decades, he influenced the development of several music genres. Brown began his career as a singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined an R&B vocal group,

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James Brown performing live in Hamburg, Germany during February 1973

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Brown (middle) & The Famous Flames (far left to right, Bobby Bennett, Lloyd Stallworth, and Bobby Byrd), performing live at the Apollo Theater in New York City, 1964

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Brown after a concert in Tampa on January 29, 1972

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James Brown performing in June 2005

George Benson
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George Benson is an American musician, guitarist and singer-songwriter. He began his career at 21 as a jazz guitarist. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of jazz players such as Django Reinhardt. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing jazz with Jack McDuff. He then launched a solo care

1.
George Benson performing in Madrid 2009

2.
Benson in September 2011

Luther Vandross
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Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. He later became the singer of the group Change, which released its certified gold debut album, The Glow of Love. After Vandross left the group, he was signed to Epic Records as a solo artist and released his solo album, Never Too Much. His hit songs include Never T

1.
Vandross performing with Diana Ross in New York, July 2000

Mahalia Jackson
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Mahalia Jackson was an American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful voice, she was referred to as The Queen of Gospel. She became one of the most influential singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as the single most powerful woman in the United States. She recorded about

1.
Jackson circa 1962, photographed by Carl Van Vechten

2.
Mahalia Jackson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1962

Whitney Houston
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Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time, Houston is one of pop musics best-selling music artists of all-time, with an estimated 170–200 million records sold worldwide. She released seven albums and two soundtrack albums, all

1.
Houston performing at Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston in 1991

2.
New Hope Baptist Church

3.
Houston performing " Saving All My Love for You " on the Welcome Home Heroes concert in 1991

George Michael
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Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, known professionally as George Michael, was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham. He was best known for his work in the 1980s and 1990s, including hit singles such as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Last Christmas, and albums such as Faith

1.
George Michael performing during his 25 Live tour in 2008.

2.
George Michael performing on stage during the Faith World Tour in 1988

3.
George Michael performing in Antwerp, Belgium in 2006.

4.
George Michael on stage in Munich in 2006

Michael McDonald (singer)
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Michael McDonald is an American singer, songwriter, keyboardist and record producer. McDonalds music career more than forty years. His early career included singing with Steely Dan and he joined The Doobie Brothers in 1976 and remained an integral member until 1982, after which he released the first of eight solo albums. During his career, he has c

1.
Michael McDonald

2.
McDonald with the Doobie Brothers, 1976

Lauryn Hill
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Lauryn Noelle Hill is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She is best known for being a member of the Fugees and for her acclaimed solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Raised mostly in South Orange, New Jersey, Hill began singing with her family during her childhood. In high school, Hill was approached by Pras Miche

1.
Hill performing at RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest, in Ottawa, 2012

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A tradigital art representation, by artist boki.b, of Hill in her late 1990s appearance

3.
Hill performing in Central Park, New York, 2005

Respect (song)
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Respect is a song written and originally released by American recording artist Otis Redding in 1965. The song became a 1967 hit and signature song for R&B singer Aretha Franklin, the music in the two versions is significantly different, and through a few minor changes in the lyrics, the stories told by the songs have a different flavor. Reddings ve

1.
"Respect"

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
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A Natural Woman is a 1967 single released by American soul singer Aretha Franklin on the Atlantic label. The song was co-written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, with input from Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler, the record was a big hit for Franklin, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became a standard song for her. Franklin also include

Think (Aretha Franklin song)
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Think is a song performed by American singer Aretha Franklin. It was released as single in 1968, from her Aretha Now album, the song, a feminist anthem, reached No.7 on Billboard Hot 100, becoming Franklins seventh top 10 hit in the United States. The song also reached number 1 on the magazines Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles, the song was written by Fr

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"Think"

1960s in music
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In North America and Europe the decade was particularly revolutionary in terms of popular music, as it saw the evolution of rock. In the early-1960s, rock and roll in its purest form was gradually overtaken by pop rock, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock, and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. The country- and folk-influenced style associate

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The arrival of the Beatles in the U.S., and subsequent appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, marked the start of the British Invasion in which a large number of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from Britain gained massive popularity in the U.S.

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The Monkees, another popular band dominating the 60s.

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The Rolling Stones in 1965

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The British band Cream in 1966

Honorific nicknames in popular music
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These patterns of naming were transferred to rock and roll when it emerged in the 1950s. There was a series of attempts to find the King of Rock n Roll and this has been seen as part of a process of the appropriation of credit for innovation of the then new music by a white establishment. Similar honorific nicknames have been given in other genres,

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By the 1920s, American bandleader Paul Whiteman was often referred to as the "King of Jazz" in press releases

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American musician James Brown was known as the "Godfather of Soul", "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business","Mr Dynamite", and "Soul Brother number one".

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American singer Ruth Brown has been referred to as the "Queen of R&B"

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Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung has been deemed the "God of Songs"

Billboard (magazine)
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Billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group, a division of Eldridge Industries. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events and it is also known for its music charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200, tracking the most popular singles and albums in

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An 1896 issue of Billboard

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Cover of Billboard (January 26, 2013).

Billboard Hot 100
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The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for singles, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales, radio play and online streaming, the weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday, when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in

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The Billboard logo

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
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I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is the eleventh studio album by American singer Aretha Franklin. Released on March 10,1967 by Atlantic Records, It went to number 2 on the Billboard album chart and it was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1967. The album included two singles, Respect was a #1 single on Billboards Hot 100 Pop singles chart. In 196

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The Cleftones during their participation in the doo-wop festival celebrated in May 2010 at the Benedum Center.

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The Quotations live in concert at the Benedum Center, Pennsylvania

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Kathy Young with The Earth Angels performing Kathy's hit A Thousand Stars during the festival of this genre celebrated at the Benedum Center for the performing arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in May 2010